Is the iNat directorship taking iNat in the right direction and paying enough attention to the user base?

[zygy]

Wow, I think you just gave me a healthy dose of reality!

[etuz]

I’ll chime in as a more casual user. I like the CV and all my friends and family who I’ve shown the app to have also liked that feature. The reality is that the vast majority of the app’s users are casual and don’t really use the app to be part of a community. They use it to get IDs on stuff and maybe feel like they’re contributing to science, but definitely not to engage in a community of people.

I also do not think the app being community-focused and having a CV model are mutually exclusive things that are opposite to each other. Since I’ve started to become more engaged in iNat over the last 2 years, I’ve been feeling the community aspect of it and I can recognize familiar faces already. Sometimes I’ll reach out to people who I know are experts on a certain group to ask for their ID. The community aspect is still very much alive. And honestly, who knows, maybe I never would have become more involved had the CV not been a gateway to using the app. I think there is also an argument to be made that the CV actually helps grow the community because it helps retain users and make them more interested over time.

[asteroidowl]

Not convinced that CV has decreased people identifying for each other. If someone shows me site stats to back it up, then I’ll happily look at them.

[Vermfly]

CV may provide a better starting off point but the design of the site still requires community help to reach research grade.

[dgwdoesthings]

@etuz

The reality is that the vast majority of the app’s users are casual and don’t really use the app to be part of a community. They use it to get IDs on stuff and maybe feel like they’re contributing to science, but definitely not to engage in a community of people

Exactly why many believe that one app “iNat Next” cannot please everyone, and why Seek should not be abandoned in the way many feel it has been.

[dlevitis]

Sorry to make you feel strange! I happen to live close enough to where iNat is based, and to be a gregarious enough person, to have met several of the people who work on it, often at a bioblizt or similar. I do not feel that having met these very personable people gives me much insight into the organization, or changes my overall experience of iNat.

My impression is that like most newish organizations, iNat is going through substantial growing pains. Usually these are hidden from the public, but @kueda has, for better or worse, told us some of what he’s seen behind it.

[dgwdoesthings]

Hopeful for the elaboration of this from the December update:

@tiwane

This year, we’re focused on strengthening the core features that make iNaturalist work for our most experienced and involved community members, while also exploring new ways to make the platform more welcoming and useful for everyone. We’ll be sharing our overall product plans for the coming year in a separate post soon.

[earthknight]

The CV system had to be trained and it’s only trained by the community based identifications on observations that reach research grade.

[zoology123]

This is not correct and it’s more complicated. Even casual observations can be used as training data depending on circumstance and if they meet the eligibility requirements.

[vbjanos]

I was happy with the survey. I had my pet peeve, too specific suggestion, listed.

[vbjanos]

@RoseRobin

I do not want any of my photos to be used to train AI. Is there a way to prevent this?

No.
Anything that is streamed can be scrubbed and I am sure AI other than the CV are using them.

[afdexter]

@RoseRobin

I’m very concerned about data being used to train AI id

Can you explain what your concerns are?

For my part, I DO want my photos to inform the automated ID suggestions. I try to take photos that will show important aspects of mistletoes, both so that other iNat users can see what is distinctive about a species and so the Computer Vision will include those aspects in its recognition.

[sjl197]

I am rather dismayed that several of the recent replies on this thread seem to be digressing onto various sideline topics. To bring this back. Why does it require another forum user to dig some text out from a different forum post (see above “updates for December”) to get indirect viewpoint that someone at the staff end might have been reading any of the above? This whole thread started at the end of a week, ran over the weekend, but now has continued over several working week days. Now we have a long thread (in part) about many forum users being concerned by a lack of response at staff end?

Wait, perhaps this:

“Hey everyone, thank you all for many interesting viewpoints, great discussion! Together you’ve all contributed so much over the years, we really value you! Without you all we would not have such a great community, nor be able to provide new users with the great value from our combined efforts and experience. We just put some context into our December update where we tell you about some recent developments, check them out and we will try to continue with monthly announcements to keep you all informed. In the new year we look forward to bringing in more features and updates to grow together stronger, but please know that our community matters to us!”

There you go iNat, I’ve just done a hypothetical general goodwill comment in-line with what I was really hoping to have seen by now.

[seastarya]

Thanks for this, you’re right that it would have been helpful for us to update you all here as well. We have been reading through this (and other) forum threads and really do appreciate everyone’s feedback and contributions to iNaturalist. Thank you for being patient with us while we work on getting better at keeping folks updated here.

Just for easy reference, here’s the December update forum thread and a blog post we published the same day.

[spiphany]

Consistently displaying blog posts on the website for all users, not just that subset of users who happen to use iNat’s interface in English might be a good step for doing better at keeping folks updated. It seems like users might be given a choice to decide whether they want to see this or not (say, a profile setting), rather than having someone else assume in advance that they are not interested in certain announcements.

[asteroidowl]

I agree - even an emailed blog post or something would be helpful, and people could turn the option to get that info on and off like notifications. I wouldn’t have seen the voting thing on subspecies and community agreement had I not scrolled all the way down to the bottom of my notifications dashboard. It’s small and easily missed.

[DianaStuder]

On the website it is top right and in your face. It should be visible to all users, I agree.

[arboretum_amy]

It depends on how you’re viewing the website. On a phone browser the subspecies trial and other blog posts are at the very bottom of the page.

[holyegg]

Proof that “power users” still often miss these is how many curators were unaware of the short-term policy change last year requiring a one month flagging period before committing taxonomic changes for plants. Messaging about policy changes etc is definitely not optimized (even if it feels “in your face” already for you and me).

[asteroidowl]

This is how it shows up on a tablet browser as well.